Otagai no Seimeisen
by UltraM2000
Summary: It's been raining for three days straight. Hakkai's looking at his lifeline again and Gojyo wants to make him stop. Then he notices something strange about his friend's hands...and so does Hakkai...(slight touchy-feely fluff)


Inspiration: Getting sick of Hakkai staring at his lifeline while 'Alone' is playing.3

Disclaimer: Saiyuki is not mine. Slight smidgens of 85 and a mortal mangling of what must be the very interesting art of palm-reading. I only know where the lifeline is, so excuse my ignorance!  
Thank you **Azzie@Az** for catching my mistake. I got a little lost between 'Makai Tenjou' and 'Maten Kyoumon'..._terima kasih ya akak_! =^_^=  
  
"Funny, Hakkai...you should have died at 19..." "Even funnier, Gojyo, something slashed into your own lifeline..."

_** Otagai No Seimeisen**_

It was raining again. When the word 'again' is mentioned, consider it a substitute for 'for the third time in three days'. It rained so badly that Sanzo couldn't touch his cigarettes, Gojyo couldn't bear the taste of his beer and Goku didn't feel like a bite of food at all. Now ** THAT'S** what Gojyo called rain.

Hakkai, however, seemed the same, cheerfully getting room bookings for the inn that night, calmly going about getting the three settled in before going to his own room with a polite little 'Goodnight, _minasan_.'

_Who was Hakkai trying to kid?_ thought Gojyo fiercely once he had left. The smile had not lit the 23-year-old's eyes in the way of a true smile. His voice was hoarse, hollow and a little shaky. Nope, Hakkai hated the rain as much as a certain corrupt, raw-smelling monk did, and Gojyo wasn't going to let that beautiful smile he had such a fancy for be hidden behind a curtain of water from heaven.

_Baka Tenkai. _Stupid heaven.

Gojyo quietly opened his door and walked out onto the corridor. The smell of rain and damp earth pierced his senses, and as he toyed with a strand of his long red hair, he thought of times before. All the danger they had gone through. All the stupidity he had to face. All the images of his group he could remember.

Goku eating. Goku sleeping. Goku fighting. Goku chewing on his arm. Goku apologising profusely for it later.

Sanzo shooting. Sanzo hitting with the _harisen_. Sanzo preaching. Sanzo chanting the _Maten Kyoumon_. Sanzo patting Goku on the head.

Hakkai smiling. Hakkai playing with Hakuryuu. Hakkai laughing as he drove Hakuryuu while Sanzo yelled at a squabbling Goku and Gojyo. Hakkai staring at his lifeline...

What? No, that wasn't right. Why'd THAT image come to mind?

"_Seimeisen mijikee naa_..." the little voice in his head whispered.

That was his line. When Hakkai had got up from a nightmare and out of Hakuryuu, the night he had fought Chin Isou's _karakuri_ puppet, Gojyo, too, had awakened. He followed the brunette and found him staring at both hands, mumbling softly.

"Your lifeline's real short, innit?" he remarked.

"Yikes!" yelped Hakkai. "You surprised me!"

"That's my line! I can't believe you let me creep up behind your back so easily."

A pause. "Which one is the life line?"

"Hmm? The line here."

"You're right. It is short."

"Mine goes all the way to my wrist," said Gojyo. Had there been a hint of gloating in his voice? Gojyo re-examined his palm. The line that raced down his hand almost did disappear into his wrist bandages, bumping into a few other lines on the way.

The _hanyou_ palmed his forehead and cursed himself in twelve languages (and two demonic dialects besides). Gojyo had planted a seed with his careless words, and the seed had grown and flourished through Hakkai's soul much like the _karakuri_ puppet's seed damn near killed the half-demon that cold night.

_Time to do a little high-energy pruning,_ thought Gojyo as he scuttled off towards Hakkai's room. 

++++++++++

Hakkai had just come out of the shower when Gojyo knocked on his door. His hair was damp, carrying a faint smell of some unidentified herbal shampoo.

"Who is it?"

"_Ore da_. Can I come in?"

"Just a second," came the reply. Hakkai threw a towel round himself and unlocked the door.

"Something the matter, Gojyo?"

"Nah. Not really. Just came to check on you."

Hakkai laughed nervously. "Shouldn't that be the other way round?"

"I'm not the one whose past returns with the rain."

A silence. "E...well, you said you wanted to come in. _Douzo_." Hakkai stepped aside to let his friend into the room and closed the door behind him. What Gojyo said was right, the rain, to use the vernacular, sucked immensely. Yet what could he do? The rain would fall no matter how hard he wished it wouldn't. The blood would flow no matter how hard he tried to banish it from his mind.

_The blood will continue to flow across my hands..._

_Hands so stained in sin they could never hold anyone, anything..._

_Hands so stained with blood they leave their dirty traces on anything I touch..._

"_Yamerou_."

"Huh?"

"You're doing it again," Gojyo said tensely.

"Doing what?"

"Staring at your freaking lifeline, damnit!" he snapped. "I didn't think about what I said that night when Isou started bugging us for real, but now when I think of your face I see you staring at your lifeline! Me and my big trap!"

"Gojyo..."

"You never tell anyone your troubles, Hakkai, just wrap it in a smile and send it to hell by parcel post. It's not good for you...or for me, either."

"Gojyo...?"

The kappa flashed the sinner a rakish smile. "There. I said it. When it comes to your troubles, I'm like that _saru_. I don't like secrets."

"Gojyo...!"

"So give me your hand. I'm going to tell you things about that seimeisen that you never cared to think about."

"Gojyo...?!"

"Quit repeating my name like a goldfish and give me your hand. Or give me both of them."

Hakkai seemed to have no choice but comply. He sat down on the bed and obediently held out both palms, wondering what Gojyo was trying to do.

"The left hand is what fate deals you. The right hand is what you deal fate." Gojyo plumped down on the bed, spun Hakkai round with a deft twist to the shoulder and looked at the left hand first. "Hmm. Your life line..."

"It is kind of short, isn't it?"

"Shh." Gojou was studying it with a kind of intense stare designed to burn through steel. Then he looked at the right hand.

"Have you noticed something strange?"

"No. What?"

"Your left hand has a longer lifeline than your right."

It did.

"Oh!..."

"And there's something strange about your right hand, too."

"Is it?"

"Yeah." Gojyo paused for dramatic purposes and smiled a little sad smile. "Funny, Hakkai...if your hand speaks the truth, you should have died at 19."

"_Are?_"

"Take a look." Gojyo traced the short little groove in Cho Hakkai's palm with one of his own long, scarred fingers. It stopped abruptly halfway down the base of the thumb.

"And look, it starts up again...right...here."

Gojyo's finger jumped about 2 mm down to a line just below it. If not for the missing portion it would have been a nice, long, complete lifeline, stretching to the base of the palm like everybody else's.

_"Cho Gonou is dead," Sanzo had told Gojyo three years ago. He still remembered._

_"Cho Gonou will be dead from now on, layman, for henceforth your name will be Cho Hakkai," the Sanbutsushin had boomed authoritatively._

"I see what you mean," Hakkai replied slowly. Slowly, his left hand reached for Gojyo's right and his fingers closed gently on his friend's wrist.

"Heh? Hakkai, what..."

"I also noticed something strange about yours that night, Gojyo. Would you like to hear what it is?" Hakkai asked, smiling at him gaily.

"Eh...well...OK."

"This lifeline of yours...the long, unbroken one...seems to be a very twisty little line..."

It was Hakkai's turn to trace the contours of Gojyo's palm and a little shiver went up the half-breed's spine at the gentle, light touch.

"It's funny, Gojyo...something slashed into your own lifeline right here."

It did. The lifeline flew smack-bang right into the Line of Fate almost before it had even started.

"And then it goes on in tandem. So that means the line on its own ends here...tell me, Gojyo, what does that mean?"

Gojyo gulped. "I should have died when I was eight, according to this crap..." he sputtered disbelievingly.

Wasn't this little line that parted from the lifeline also called Line of Brotherhood? Ah...it looped and flowed back into the Life-Fate line that stretched down his wrist...

Hakkai smiled softly, grasping Gojyo's hand in his own two.

"Lifeline cut in half to be reborn. Lifeline pulled on by mere Fate. It seems we are connected by more than a bloody past, Gojyo."

"Is that a curse, or an adjective?"

"Adjective."

"Just checking. It isn't like you to swear."

"Oh, it isn't, is it? I could surprise you."

"Don't bother. I'd blush."

"You? BLUSH?"

"I might," Gojyo said, looking deep into the malachite depths iof Hakkai's eyes.

"I scarcely believe that, somehow," Hakkai said with an unusually cock-eyed smile, looking into Gojyo's eyes and for the first time, not thinking of blood.

Somehow the rain didn't seem so bad outside anymore as the lifelines melded into one long, strong path into the night.

And the seed Gojyo had planted shrank back into its husk.


End file.
